Steam's built-in game save feature has been available in beta since the summer, but following a client update to Steam yesterday, it's now properly launched for every user. It's basically another method of capturing funny ragdoll bloopers and sending them to the “lol-games-idiot” channel of your friend's Discord. Or because you shared that accidental knife throw in Call Of Duty on Twitter, as if you really wanted to kill the guy on the map all along. Or save a clip for your personal recordings, like the moment you knocked an innocent citizen off the 15-foot wall of the castle town in Dragon's Dogma 2. We all do this, right? Right?
The Steam update is accompanied by a post explaining the full details of the save game feature. It can continuously record your games for up to 2 hours by running in the background (like the similar OBS program or Nvidia's Shadowplay program). You can then crop some things up and spread the joke love with some clickable share buttons. It runs on Steam Deck, and you can also set save limits for each game individually; for example, you can allocate a longer recording time window to your run in Hades 2, but have it never record it. other game. You know, even the one you shouldn't install. What, you thought I wouldn't notice? Disgusting.
Our James tried the recording technology in beta and quite liked Valve's method compared to other video capture programs. He says it's easy to find your MP4 files, and you can instantly get back to your footage using the Steam overlay. If a game has special timeline features, you'll be shown icons over certain key moments, like boss fights and deaths.
“I used this feature to replay my death at the hands of a knife-spamming Elden Ring bullshit merchant,” James said, “quickly studying his moves to prepare for a more successful rematch. Great!”
In the meantime, I'll be happy as long as it's less cranky than Nvidia's own capture method, which uses GeForce Experience – the video capturer I used until recently deciding it didn't want to record anything with even the slightest whiff of Spotify. or YouTube running in the background. Awww, is this little video capchah software afraid of a little copyright infringement? MAGIC, NVIDIA. Jesus.
Elsewhere in the client update post, Valve notes that this new client won't work for users still running Windows 7 or 8 (plus some older versions of the Mac). Additionally, there are some fixes to the Big Picture mode, controller input, and remote playback feature. But this is all so boring. Go a dude and cut it out.